Sometimes, we write things which we love but which don’t quite work (at least for other people), yet they won’t leave us alone.
I realise that I’m probably using first-person plural here to feel less alone, and perhaps to disguise the fact that I’m just rambling about my own process. Certainly, I wouldn’t recommend my ‘process’ to anyone else. While it has undeniably produced some work that I’m proud of, it is also mind-wrenchingly inefficient. I read articles and watch tutorials daily, hoping to learn consistency, but when I try to implement such techniques I seem incapable of producing work of any real worth. I’m not, of course, suggesting that more prolific writers are doing it wrong, but rather acknowledging a weakness I have yet to overcome.
I recall explaining to Dr. Reynolds, my erstwhile tutor at Lampeter, that writing feels like picking at my soul until it bleeds, and that, when something genuinely good emerges, it leaves me feeling depleted — as though I left a part of myself on the page. She seemed shocked and didn’t relate at all. I was left feeling that I may be approaching the whole craft incorrectly, and am yet to be entirely convinced otherwise. However, I’ve also been unable to find a more efficient process which allows me to create work that I’m happy to share with the world.
Yet I’m not entirely alone in this, so can, perhaps, justify my use of the pluralised point of view. In his 1903 novella Tristan, Thomas Mann’s narrator opines:
… his words did not come in a rush; they came with such pathetic slowness, considering the man was a writer by trade, you would have drawn the conclusion, watching him, that a writer is one to whom writing comes harder than to anybody else.1
…which pretty much sums it up.
Obviously, the likes of Stephen King or James Patterson would disagree, but I have concluded that they are magical beings; mere mortals like myself may be damned to struggle on through a mire of existential self-analysis, forever doomed to sporadic output, poverty and madness.
A few years ago, I was tasked with reflecting upon my writing process in the form of poetry. After two weeks, I managed to produce a haiku:
Poetic process:
it just erupts from my brain
sprouting like a wart.
Can you imagine trying to teach me?2
Yet, for all the frustration of my mentors and well-meaning friends, I can promise you that actually being me is more infuriating — at least you lot get to ignore me when it becomes too much.
Anyway, when I saw this call for submissions for Silent Nightmares, from Chuck Palahniuk (no less!), I figured I really should follow his advice to ‘plan ahead’. I started making notes on the barrage of new ideas, which predictably overwhelmed me in days. I’m sure some of them will stand up to future development, but with a deadline looming a mere two months away, and with intimate knowledge of the spiritual self-harm I’m about to embark upon by taking on another new project, I could really use a short cut.
Thanks then, is due to For the Writer’s Soul, and their lovely free weekly guided meditations, which last week focussed on ‘breathing new life into old ideas’.3 This reminded me of a short story I wrote last year, called O Watcher of Men, of which I was terrifically proud at the time, but which fell very flat with most beta readers. I completed it, to the best of my ability at the time, but it entirely failed to evoke the response I had hoped for, so I abandoned the piece. It, however, has never abandoned me, and has been scurrying around in the cobwebbed shadows of my hind-brain squealing horribly, like an injured rat, ever since.
It is, to my mind, a cosmic horror story — but that could probably fit into a liberal definition of ‘ghost story’, right? I mean, there’s no actual tentacles. Besides, the readers who saw last year’s draft didn’t really agree with my genre definition anyway.
The premise relies on the following principle:
People in Eastern religions, people who meditate, who practice occultism and who take psychedelic drugs, all report an experiential phenomenon referred to as the ‘third eye’, which allows spiritual insight, revelations etc. In Hinduism, this is known as the Ajna chakra, and is thought to link us directly to Brahman (which, in Judeo-Christian terms might be described as ‘God’). There is a general consensus that the various methods of ‘opening’ this eye are complex, and take years to master (without drugs).
So, if this experience of illumination, or activation of Ajna, is tapping into ‘divine sight’, I was left wondering why God would have Its eye shut in the first place. Which leads, of course, to the further question — if Brahman is the ultimate reality, and God is omnipresent and omnipotent, what else is there to even look at.
As my character Steffen Antonsen, a disgraced research psychologist, notes to the protagonist of the original story:
‘Nirvana. Enlightenment. Krishna consciousness. Every tribe, society, religion — all seek to open the third eye. The eye of God. The eye of Horus, or Ra. The lost eye of Odin. The Eye of Providence, Fatima… Hamsa. To open the eye of God is to see the true nature of things.
‘Yet nobody ever asked why it was closed!’
Despite the poor reception, I would go on to write a prequel, called Justin, in flash form. This proved equally unpopular with beta readers, but serves to show how much space this story was occupying in my head last year. In this piece, professor Antonsen explains to the eponymous hero:
‘Justin, my dear boy. Even within our whole, perfect, unified, divine self, there is darkness. For all that we try to re-assure ourselves of the transcendent power of universal love, God is terrified of finding Itself alone.
‘Yet the truth is more frightening still. You see, God is not alone…
‘And that is much, much, worse.’
I thought Justin was better than O Watcher of Men, but it’s inability to ensnare readers any more than the original would lead me to shelve the project, exiling it to that composting mountain of unfinished and unloved manuscripts I call ‘most of my work’, where it has squatted, glaring with malice ever since.
But here I am, still writing about it a year later. The disheartening process of beta-readings last year resulted in a huge amount of feedback and questions — an opportunity to repair those points that readers didn’t gel with, which, to date, I have squandered in an epic sulk. You see, from my point of view, those things were important mechanics of the plot… but they didn’t work.
So, is it a good idea to revive a failed project for something I would REALLY like to be a part of. Is it sensible to send even a reworked draft, of a story that has previously failed to land, to someone as important to me as bloody Chuck Palahniuk? Obviously, there’s a chance that last year’s beta readers were simply the wrong audience — I mean, it wasn’t universally despised.
But no, I think the points made were very valid, and exposed base level flaws in my delivery, so I don’t think patching it and submitting it for something I really care about would be clever. However, Justin and O Watcher of Men combined represent only 60% of the maximum word count for this submission, which gives me an awful lot of scope to approach from a different angle. Furthermore, while set in Winter, there is nothing to tie the original story to the festive season — but, the moment I considered that problem, I realised that not only is there scope to do so, but it might actually provide an angle that would address several of the problems!
So, the plan should be: take the premise, which is stuck in my head and begging for a story it can thrive in, and figure out an entirely new approach to reach the same, extremely transgressive and shocking climax as the original, but in a way that takes readers along with me this time.
You see, there’s two ways to look at this. Either I’m grubbing around in the trash, looking for ideas to recycle… or last year’s frustrating, soul-crushing work on these stories provides groundwork for a brand new project, which will be awesome and blow everybody’s mind! Hooray!
(I hope it’s the second option).
What do you lovely people of SubStack think? Should we kill our darlings and move on, or are ideas that haunt you after completion worth tackling again from new perspectives?
Let me know what you think, and if you’ve made it this far, thank you! Please consider restacking/sharing it and/or subscribing (it’s entirely free) to see more nonsense like this in the future. I mean, obviously not consistently or regularly, but every now and then at least.
Thomas Mann, ‘Tristan’, in Death in Venice and Seven Other Stories, trans. by H. T. Lowe-Porter (New York: Vintage Books, 1963, orig. 1954), pp. 317-358 (pp. 349-350).
I’m seriously considering producing a wall calendar for 2025 featuring one of my pithy facetious haikus per month, alongside my absurdist digital artwork. Would anyone buy it, do you reckon?
I’m forever grateful for their little weekly prompts to stop and breathe, and since I can’t afford to attend their retreats (I’m a poet, you see), a little plug here will have to suffice for now.
You could even write a meta story about the work that keeps haunting you and won't leave you alone!
Definitely worth another go with fresh eyes. There is obviously more that needs to be written if it has haunted you for a year. Good luck! I hope it doesn't depleate you too much.